


Salt

by Dendritic_Trees



Category: Halo
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Food, Gen, Marines, Spartans and their strange metabolisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dendritic_Trees/pseuds/Dendritic_Trees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Salt is crucial for the function of the body, it regulates the balance of water and generates the impulses which fire nerves and contract muscles.  Spartans, whose muscles are denser and whose nerves fire so much faster than everyone else’s, need it more than most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt

Salt is very valuable. In ancient Rome soldiers were paid in salt. Salt is crucial for the function of the body, it regulates the balance of water and generates the impulses which fire nerves and contract muscles. Spartans, whose muscles are denser and whose nerves fire so much faster than everyone else’s, need it more than most.

Sergeant Daniel Hollyoak didn’t know about the ancient Roman army, he hadn’t taken biology in High School, and he certainly didn’t know the classified details of the SPARTAN-II augmentation program. Everything he knew about the Spartans was that the UNSC put them on all the propaganda posters like they were superheroes and that three of them had blown through a whole pack of Covenant Elites like a trio of human tanks to rescue what was left of his squad, which currently made him very kindly disposed to both them and the UNSC propaganda machine.

They’ve holed up in the burned out remains of a diner to wait for better light when things start moving in the direction of weird. Its not a bad hidey-hole really. There’s even running water. One of the Spartans, he can’t tell them apart, splashes water across their gauntlets to sluice off the coating of purple elite blood then dives across the room and grabs something off one of the tables.

“Oh thank God!” she announces, removing her helmet with a faint hiss, “I was about to start licking the pavement.”

It isn’t until she starts shaking a pile of salt into her hand that Sergeant Hollyoak realizes she’s getting excited about a salt-shaker. He isn’t sure, exactly, what he thought Spartans would look like under their armour, but angular and translucently pale with slightly matte looking eyes is about the right level of weird for a Spartan. That the Spartan is cheerfully licking salt out of her open palm puts her in an entirely different category of bizarre behaviour.

And then the other two start. Same deal, lapping piles of table salt out of their gauntleted palms like it’s a treat.

If they notice the open mouthed staring and the mutters of ‘what are they doing?’ and ‘that is so gross’ from Hollyoak’s squad, they don’t respond, but Daniel makes the rest of the guys shut up anyway.

Daniel Hollyoak survives the war. He routinely dines out on the story about the time his squad was rescued by three Spartans. He’s quick to talk about seeing one of them slide between two Covenant Elites and kill them both with combat knife. He describes what Spartan-II’s look like under their helmets in a conspiratorial whisper long past the time when a conspiratorial whisper is needed. He keeps the image of three Spartans, lapping up salt like deer standing in the road, to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> I think that Roman soldiers being paid in salt is actually apocryphal, but it works well so I'm keeping it.


End file.
